Charli XCX has revealed “House,” a new song featuring John Cale written for Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights.
In addition to tapping The Velvet Underground’s John Cale for “House,” Charli crafted the song with regular collaborator Finn Keane. On “House,” Charli embraces the dark, brooding undercurrent of Wuthering Heights. It lands in a more cinematic and goth style, with Cale offering a spoken word meditation on transformation and doubt across tense strings; when the song’s final third arrives, a wall of sound arrives, providing a strong, brutal intensity beneath Charli XCX’s auto-tuned croons.
Charli and Cale also star in the video, which features a myriad of dark, haunting images: Charli pours candle wax on her skin, Cale narrates tensely and expresses concern, crows fly in slow motion, and shadows of unseen figures move on and off screen. Watch the Mitch Ryan-video for “House” below.
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In a note shared on social media, Charli discussed helming songs for Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights with Keane: “After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she wrote. “When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.”
Charli, being a fan of Todd Haynes’ 2021 documentary on The Velvet Underground and the band’s storied output, recruited Cale for the song; she described his quote of good music needing to be “elegant and brutal” as a guiding force: “I got really stuck on that phrase. I wrote it down in my notes app and would pull it up from time to time and think about what he meant.” She recalled calling Cale up to exchange ideas, writing, “That voice, so elegant, so brutal. I sent him some songs, and we started talking specifically about ‘House.’ We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was… well, it made me cry.”
“House” is Charli XCX’s first new song in over a year; her last release was the Brat companion album Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. In the meantime, Charli has been gearing up for a new era in cinema, with more tracks from Fennell’s Wuthering Heights on the way along with a star-studded new film, The Moment, hitting theaters in 2026. As for Cale, the musician returned last year to offer his 18th studio album, POPtical Illusion.